


Short Circuit

by josephina_x



Series: Night and Flame: The Song Electric [2]
Category: Smallville, Smallville Season 11 (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas, Fix-It, Gen, Hospitals, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Question: What does Lex do with Clark's powers? Answer: Get Clark into trouble!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Short Circuit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jlvsclrk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jlvsclrk/gifts).



> Title: Short Circuit  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville, Smallville Season 11  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through Smallville (before the seven-year-jump), and through Season 11's "Guardian" arc  
> Word count: 5400+  
> Summary: Question: What does Lex do with Clark's powers? Answer: Get Clark into trouble!  
> Warnings: Un-beta'd.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: A continuation of the original Clexmas Gift Exchange 2012 fic ["And Sparks Flew"](http://clexmas.livejournal.com/67665.html) for [jlvsclrk](http://jlvsclrk.livejournal.com) (posted to personal LJ [here](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com/37389.html)).

~*~*~*~*~*~

"I can't believe you did that!" Clark said angrily, as Oliver wheeled him up to the Watchtower entrance.

"Clark--" Oliver said tiredly. That only made Clark angrier, because he shouldn't be tired that Clark had been berating him ever since Lex had disappeared out of the hospital, what he should be was _sorry_.

In particular-- "Don't give me that! Didn't you learn anything from the last two times you killed him?!"

"Two times?" Oliver said, sounding confused, and a little outraged. "I only killed him once!"

...Okay, _that right there_ was obviously a problem.

"You killed Lex the first time" _physically, I'm not gonna count what part you had in what happened between him and Duncan_ "when you attacked him while you were on that RL65 healing serum stuff that was making you all aggressive and crazy." When Oliver looked at him with no comprehension, Clark added, "You _shot_ him in his LuthorCorp Towers top floor office, remember? He didn't just _almost_ die. He _did_ die. I pulled out the arrow and used the last of the serum on him. He _almost_ stayed dead."

"You saved his life," Oliver said dully.

"It's what I do," Clark said, looking up at Oliver as he punched the button for the elevator.

"He's a murderer! --And you knew it!" Oliver said angrily.

"So are you!" Clark said. "You killed Lex! And I knew it when I saved you from the Toyman's bomb." _And I did it anyway, so what's your point?_ Not that calling Lex a murderer was exactly fair; at that point in time, Lex may have killed Roger Nixon, but he'd been saving Clark's life at the time, and Morgan Edge and Graham Garrett had been self-defense. And, as it turned out, Pamela Black hadn't been murdered by him, Clark had discovered after the fact -- it really had been some stupid, desperate kid at the halfway house in a mugging-gone-wrong. Yes, Lex had killed later, and could be called a murderer _now_ , but... well, that had been later, and not the point. Most, if not all, of the ones later had tried to kill Lex _first_ \-- not that that excused any of it, especially not _Lionel_ , but still. Not the point. ...Besides, why was Oliver complaining about Clark's longstanding habit of trying to save Lex _now_ , anyway? He hadn't back then.

Clark knew how unreasonable Oliver got about Lex, though, so he tried another tack: "I've saved prison convicts from a bus crash before, and you didn't complain."

"That's because you-- we-- don't have time to ask those things when we're saving people," Oliver said tightly, going pale.

"So, what, if it had been _you_ at the bus crash, you'd have been letting the convicts who had life sentences stay trapped and burn alive in the wreckage, maybe fired warning shots at any firemen who were trying to do their job to save them, instead of getting them all out and rounding them up for the authorities like I did?" Clark said, looking up at Oliver oddly, because he was _sure_ Oliver wouldn't have done something so horrific as to just stand by and _watch_. "--You killed Lex and framed Winslow Scott for it; you think _you_ didn't deserve to be saved from the Toyman's bomb?" Clark said, frowning at him. He'd realized later that Oliver hadn't thought so at the time, but...

"Nobody _deserves_ to be saved, but at least I've been doing better with my life since!" Oliver said, his voice shaking. "Lex doesn't care who he hurts, and he'll never change!"

"Really? You've changed?" Clark said incredulously, as the elevator doors slid open. "You just tried to kill Lex _again!_ How is that _any_ different than before?"

"Well, it didn't take, did it?" Oliver said grimly, as he pushed Clark into the elevator.

"Only because he has half my powers right now," Clark gritted out. "And it's not like you knew that until _after you shot him_." _Because you weren't listening to me._ It took Clark some effort to stop clenching the armrests of his wheelchair so hard, because Oliver was seriously on his last nerve right now. He'd been angry when he'd found out about that unbelievably manipulative Roulette business that Chloe had inflicted on Oliver, years ago now, but to now discover that, on top of everything else, the only real effect that it apparently had had on him was to make him (a) less suicidal and (b) _more_ likely to kill Lex with _less_ qualms about it...?

And people wondered why he believed that the ends never justified the means. Conversely, _Clark_ wondered why human beings never seemed to realize that picking bad means never got them the ends they all wanted so desperately.

_God. I am **so** getting Oliver kicked out of the League for this_ , Clark thought, as the elevator stopped at Basement Level 5 and Oliver wheeled him out to Emil, Chloe, Lois, J'onn, and a hog-tied and blindfolded Eric Summers, crippled by proximity to a large chunk of green Kryptonite, writhing weakly on the floor. They were waiting by one of the isolated backup electrical generators for the building.

He wondered how long Eric had been lying there, being tortured by the pain of such close proximity to that much of the green stuff.

He also wondered why, exactly, no-one seemed to have thought that blue-K might even be an option. It wasn't like they didn't have any in reserve, right upstairs at the top of the 'Tower.

"Let's get this over with," Clark said lowly.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Great. Not only was Oliver _not_ kicked out of the League, but Clark was on _probation_.

Luckily, he'd kept his stupid mouth shut until _after_ he'd gotten his powers back. ...Well, _half_ of them, anyway.

And, after Oliver had opened his big, fat mouth and told everybody that Lex had his memories back, it had taken a _lot_ of fancy footwork -- well, more like a liberal amount of flat-out _lying_ \-- to keep the League from sending J'onn right over straightaway. To wipe out Lex's memory for him again, 'for his own good'.

Like they did to Eric Summers right after they'd green-K'd Clark's powers back to their rightful owner; before Clark had realized what was happening, it had been too late.

He was still shaking with reaction over that one; that, and the revelation that both J'onn and Brainiac 5 had gone around mind-wiping or otherwise 'revising' people's memories of him behind his back so that 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' would never be connected.

Nobody had told him about it, _probably_ because he would have 'stirred up a fuss'.

Frankly, he was feeling really low about his opinion of the human race in general right now, because the conversation had gone something like this:

"Lex has his memories back," Oliver had said without fanfare, as he took his sweet time scooping up the green-K and tossing it to Lois. --Oh wait, _he_ hadn't done that, that had been Lois taking care of him. Silly him!

"What?" Chloe had gasped, and the others had gotten their 'uh-oh' faces on.

Then they'd gotten sidetracked when Clark had asked J'onn if Eric was doing okay, and not psychotic anymore, when J'onn had put his hands to either side of his head and had obviously been doing _something_ to him (the memory wipe) before putting him under.

But for some reason, Clark's perfectly logical argument of "Eric's just gonna re-learn it anyway once he gets back to Belle Reeve and hears it from the rest of the meteor-infected, and be even angrier that you did this to him," hadn't gone over with the League even as well as his 'non-logical' argument of "It's wrong to mindwipe people," which he'd tried first and had been sure that Chloe would get behind, except that apparently "No mindwiping people" only referred to "people" when they were exclusively _her_.

And people thought _he_ was a hypocrite.

Of course, _that_ whole thing had gotten derailed by Clark finding out from J'onn about the whole 'mass mindwiping behind the scenes' thing, until Oliver had brought them back on task.

"You aren't sending J'onn over there to mindwipe Lex," Clark had told them.

And when the arguing had gotten really ugly, Clark had finally piped up again and said, "You won't do it, because if you do, then he'll know I'm Superman."

That brought everything to a halt.

"What the hell do you mean, 'then he'll know'?" Oliver had said. "He _already_ knows!"

"No," Clark had said patiently, lying his ass off. "He thinks that Superman was disguised as Clark Kent at the gala ball. He doesn't think that Clark Kent is Superman. He doesn't remember Clark Kent, past the last eight months." He'd taken a breath, hoping he'd understood Oliver's assumptions about Lex right... and he had. "Lex pulled in Eric _because_ he thought that he could get the drop on Superman."

"He remembered what happened in Smallville!" Oliver had said.

"No, he brought up what Eric _told_ him about what happened before he was put in Belle Reeve," Clark had said. "And Eric and the rest of the meteor-infected don't tell people who I am; they never have," Clark had said. It was a code. None of them told anybody about the others, if they weren't part of the infected already. It wasn't like Bart and the rest of the League, who had nothing to fear with spreading their secrets and identities around -- well, not the same things to fear, anyway. It was why they spread other people's secrets without thinking anything of it. "Eric told Lex he had a tussle with 'Superman before the tights' and got my powers for awhile before I 'stole' them back," Clark had continued. "Or, at least that was what it sounded like. I was kind of in-and-out of consciousness as they were dragging me around." Such a lie, but it wasn't as if any of the others could had been around to know he hadn't been conscious the majority of the time after having been shot, or Eric never would've gotten that far.

"Why would they talk about it in front of you?" Chloe had said suspiciously.

"Because Eric was trying to convince Lex to drag me off to a generator unit?" Clark had said. "I was too heavy to move all by himself, and he didn't explain everything beforehand. ...What, you really think that Lex's big plan was to _draw attention_ to what was going on right in the middle of his own party?" Clark had said, affecting surprise. "He could've easily played along with the whole 'Superman-pretending-to-be-Kent' thing, ordered me to the side to supposedly talk about Daily Planet-related things, drawn me off and had me walk myself right into that room, willingly and unknowingly into the trap." Clark had shrugged. "It isn't the first time Eric's left out information about the power transfer until the last minute," Clark had said, referring to what had happened in his botched non-rescue of Lex when he'd been stuck in Belle Reeve. "He knew full well if he'd told Luthor how to do it beforehand that Lex would've just cut him out. It was probably an accident that Lex ended up right there in the middle of things," he had ended, "going from what you told me about how you had him pinned down for a bit there, Oliver. Eric wouldn't want to share, and he's killed to keep that information to himself before."

"And he didn't just squeeze Eric for your identity when he had the chance, why?" Chloe had said, then had folded her arms, unconvinced.

But Clark hadn't needed to convince her. He'd just shrugged. "Who knows? He used to like mysteries and secrets, figuring things out himself. Or maybe he didn't have enough time? He could've thought Eric's 'leech' powers worked differently, until just before everything went down. Eric might've only mentioned the Superman bit right then just to assure Lex that it would work this time." He looked to J'onn. "I don't know; what did you see out of it when you were in his head?" he'd said innocently, having known full well at the time what J'onn's response would be, at least to _that_ bit of it.

"I don't keep, memorize, or share what memories I see without permission," J'onn had told the group when everyone had looked to him. "That would be unethical."

_Uh huh. Because mindwiping somebody isn't wrong, but sharing what you saw while you were invading the privacy of somebody's mind totally is,_ Clark thought with a mental eyeroll as he thought back on it. _At least I felt some serious guilt and trepidation over having Chloe forget my secret,_ Clark thought. _And it wasn't like I had a choice with Lois; she would've died from the strain if we hadn't wiped out her memories of that alternate future. And I **still** felt bad about it, even then._

"Look," Clark had said, "Maybe you're right and maybe he remembers. Hell, maybe he remembers _everything_. But I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember any of it, or he'd have done something a lot worse by now, and not just to me," Clark had said, looking around at all of them. "Maybe you go over there and mindwipe him and everything's okay -- for now," Clark had said. "But he's back at LexCorp by now, and he's built that place up like a fortress. If J'onn goes over there, he may not be able to stop J'onn from mindwiping him, but he'll certainly get a recording of it," Clark had warned them all. "And if you think he was angry with us before... well, maybe you all can justify mind-wiping people to keep our identities safe," he had said, including everyone in the basement room -- Oliver, Chloe, J'onn -- except Emil and Lois, who had been arguing against it on ethical grounds, "but I can't." _And it's my secret, so I should get at least **some** say in it, thanks._ "And I bet that if Lex goes public with that sort of thing, that we'll all end up being called something that has nothing to do with the idea of 'heroism' at all," and he concluded with, "and if you think that the Vigilante Registration Act was bad before..."

And, thank god, _that_ gave them all some pause.

"Besides," Clark had told them, "He's not stupid. If you mindwipe him now, when he looks at the tapes, he'll know that there was more to the Kent-Superman thing than just 'Superman in disguise'. There'd be no reason to mindwipe him, otherwise."

"So Jonn isn't the only one who goes; Chloe, you and I can short out his security system first," Oliver had said.

"Chloe, are the only feeds on the 'Tower inside it?" Clark had asked her. "And have you been able to hack his systems lately? Do you think he's got anything at least as sophisticated as the Watchtower systems you've been putting up?"

Chloe hadn't looked happy, but she had said, "No, I've got several feeds from the outside of each Watchtower system as well. Luthor's security systems aren't as good as ours, but they're no joke, either. I can't crack them from the outside; not easily, and not without getting caught -- not yet. I've still been working on getting an 'in' over there." She'd frowned. "I can definitely down his systems from the inside, no problem, but..."

"...Luthor just bought the Planet back, and he's had his people all over it," Lois had picked up where Chloe'd left off. "He could've done god-knows-what to it; they're right next door to each other. He might've put up some systems to watch the building as an extra security measure; the LexCorp offices are definitely visible from the Planet," Lois had said, reminded of the photo Jimmy had gotten the night Lionel had been killed. Then she'd gotten a worse frown.

Emil looked up from where he was squatted down next to Eric Summers, grimly checking his vitals. "Don't forget -- Luthor's helped fund half the reconstruction damage to the city, too, and he supplied his own LexCorp personnel to do it. Even if you were able to clear both of the LexCorp Towers and the Daily Planet, there are too many other buildings in the area that he's had his hands on to check and take down all-at-once."

"He's also nanny-cammed people's eyeballs before," Chloe had resumed, referring to Tess. "His own security staff might be walking recording devices," she said, grimacing.

"And he was able to track me by satellite even at top speed," Clark had put out there. "If he didn't have eyes in the sky 24-7 on top of everything else, I'd be surprised."

"Damnit," Oliver had said, sitting down.

"Look, guys, it's my secret," Clark had told them "And Lois agrees with me about mindwiping him being wrong... and a bad idea," he had added belatedly. "Worst-case, he remembers everybody, and who knows how long he's known," though Clark had an idea of that, actually. "Because, yeah, I do remember him catching all of the main roster at one point or another... except for Oliver, but the whole world knows his identity at this point anyway." _And I don't see anybody trying to mindwipe the entire planet to put that one back in the box._ "But if Lex doesn't remember, and only knows or figures out _me_ , well, you guys are off the hook," he had said. "Actually, you'd probably be off the hook anyway, because Lex practically declared himself my nemesis right before Apocalypse was about to slam into the Earth at ramming speed, and I've read some Warrior Angel since then. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what Lex would probably think being a nemesis should entail. It's my problem, not yours." _Although if it's anything like how he didn't fight back against Lana... I think I'd be more worried about Lex than myself._ Luckily(?), Clark was pretty sure that Lex had never thought of Lana as a nemesis. Otherwise, that probably would've gotten pretty ugly _really_ fast.

"Hey, Lois is my cousin, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're not gonna just leave either of you out to hang," Chloe had piped up angrily.

"I know, and I appreciate that, but I really think it's unnecessary," Clark had said.

"He knows about Kryptonite, Clark," Oliver had said darkly.

"Yeah, but so does Winslow Scott. So does Intergang. So does Batman, and some of Gotham's villains. Who knows who told whom first?" Clark had shrugged. "That might not be a memory thing, either."

"If Lex hadn't told Winslow--!" Oliver had spat out.

"--Intergang already knew through Edge," Clark had told him gently, squatting down next to the Green Arrow. "Look, Oliver, I don't want Lex to have his memory back any more than you do," Clark had lied through his teeth. "But if he does remember... I can't do this, you understand? If you go over there to mindwipe him, well, I won't be coming over there to take the rest of my powers back from him if you do. And I can't just stand by and let anyone else do it 'for' me, now that I know what's been happening," he had said with a frown he couldn't keep off of his face. "I shouldn't need that kind of protecting. If I do... well, I need to become better than that. Okay?"

And none of them had really been happy about that, but...

...that had been quickly overshadowed by everybody having found out in the worst way possible that Lex had gotten some of Clark's invulnerability and speed in the blowback, at the least. Clark almost felt like laughing about it later, because Oliver had gotten _such_ a dumbfounded look on his face when he'd realized that he'd actually left that part out in lieu of being worried about the whole _remembering_ bit.

Boy, had Chloe been mad!

None of them had really been happy either about Clark volunteering (read: insisting) to be the one to see if Luthor actually had his memories back, and if so, how many of them. Fortunately, Clark was the only one among them with any sort of record of not spilling secrets around him, or otherwise accidentally giving away any sort of information. They'd been even less thrilled at the idea of Clark confronting him alone in trying to get the rest of his powers back, but the idea that Lex might try to jump him with green-K (or let anyone else wield it near him) when he had at least part of Clark's powerset was ludicrous, and they all knew it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Clark sighed to himself as he finished taking the elevator up to the roof of the main LexCorp Towers skyscraper.

He stepped out, expecting to see Lex looking out over the city, thinking deep and Lexy and thinky (and possibly even Very Diabolically Villainous-y) thoughts.

Instead, Lex was sitting on the edge of the retaining wall, with his back to the city. He looked up as Clark exited the elevator, staring.

"Uh, hey," Clark said, as the doors closed behind him and he heard the boxcar slide back down the shaft.

"...You seem to be looking better," Lex said, watching him walk over.

"Yeah, well, I got the half of my powers back that Eric had," Clark said. "So my healing's doing wonders for me."

Lex was silent.

"Sorry about Oliver," Clark put out there.

"Don't be," Lex told him. "If you hadn't been so bad at stopping him, I might not have realized that I had part of your powers for quite some time. I certainly wouldn't have known that the League had been able to subdue Summers if you hadn't prodded Queen into becoming so flustered by it that he let the information slip, and if I hadn't known that they knew about the Kryptonite, I wouldn't have been wary enough to run before he pulled any out on me," Lex said simply.

Clark came to a halt in front of him, crossed his arms, and sighed.

"We can talk freely, if that's what you're worried about," Lex put out there. "I'm not recording, and I've got some privacy shielding up." At Clark's raised eyebrows, he added, "No sound can reverberate its way out if spoken below a certain height," and he indicated a level just above Clark's head, "and the air 'wavers' enough at the edges of the roof that video can't discern lip movements," he explained.

"Guess nothing beats a little 'accidental' heat bleed-off," Clark said, rubbing his hands over his face, feeling really, really glad that he'd 'accidentally forgotten' to take his League communicator with him up here. He did feel weirdly naked without the earbud or his belt, though.

"You took the elevator up," Lex noted.

"Well, I am still recovering from surgery, technically," Clark put out there, and he was having more difficulty not shuffling his feet in his Superman uniform than he should have been.

"So," Clark said, staring at his feet. "If we're not being listened in on..."

"Yes?" Lex said, letting his hands splay out to either side on top of the wall, and leaning back on them slightly, casually.

"...then now would probably be a great time for you to try and turn me to villainy, or something," Clark put out there. Because really, he was actually maybe even feeling up for it, at this point.

Lex blinked at him slowly.

Lex drew out the silence with an unspoken question that just hung there, heavily.

"--I've had a really bad night, ok?" Clark said, coming over and plopping down right next to Lex on the edge of the wall.

"I'd noticed," Lex offered up.

"No, no, I really don't think you have," Clark said. "Believe me, the hospital wasn't the worst of it." _Not even close._

Lex turned his head to look at him straight-on, and frowned slightly.

"I know you've got all your memories back," Clark said. "Or at least the ones you used to know."

"...And?"

"Oliver wants you mindwiped. So does Chloe. The guy they'd get to do it is perfectly willing to go along with it," Clark supplied. "I was barely able to convince them--"

"Not to?" Lex said with a disbelieving look.

"--that you probably didn't actually remember, and that Oliver had misunderstood," Clark said.

"Ah," said Lex, and that one word spoke volumes.

"I _really_ don't want to be your nemesis," Clark put out there.

"Well, I really don't want to be your friend," Lex said mildly.

Clark winced, because, yeah, he probably deserved that.

"Well, I don't know what we're going to do, then," Clark said, putting elbows to knees and head in his hands. "Because me being a hero and you being a villain is going to _suck_ and get you mindwiped again or worse, and... uh, Lois would kick my ass if I was the villain, even before you got to it first," he said, glancing over at Lex.

"And we can't _both_ be villains," Lex continued, "because that would go badly for everyone else," he said, finishing the thought.

"And I really don't want to take over the planet," Clark added, because it was true, and they'd never really gotten to have that talk after the Arctic.

"Too much work?" Lex asked.

"Uh..." Actually, he'd never really thought about it that way. "Mostly I just think it's wrong, and don't want to?"

"You don't want to... because you don't want to. What an unbelievably convincing argument," Lex said lightly, tilting his head back.

Clark thought for a minute. "The Jor-El AI sucks almost as much as Zod, I've kind of gotten used to pissing it off, and being Naman would involve stabbing you to death?"

"...Which would be bad."

"Which would be bad," Clark agreed, nodding.

"Well, we can't be friends, again," Lex said.

Clark rolled his eyes. "Yes, Lex. _And_ we can't be friends," Clark said. "Because _that_ just worked out _so well_ the first time," he ended sarcastically, rubbing his face with his palms.

"Hm," said Lex noncommitally, stretching out his legs.

Clark sighed.

There was a long silence.

"...Are you really planning on staying up here all night?" Clark asked.

"Can you think of a better use of my time at present?" Lex said.

"Uh, well." Clark made a face. "You do have superpowers. And a thing about flying." ...And a thing about heights, which wasn't nearly as weird to Clark as it probably should have been, but then Clark figured he had a similar thing going on, and _he_ flew just fine.

But Lex just gave him an incredulous look. "Are you actually suggesting I jump off this roof?"

"Well, baby birds do it," Clark said, "and you've always been kinda extreme about stuff like that."

Lex's expression changed not in the least.

"...I could catch you?" Clark offered.

"Eric Summers never displayed anything beyond enhanced strength, speed, and durability," Lex informed him. "I don't doubt that things like your 'heat vision' and 'flight powers' are tied to your unique Kryptonian biology in ways beyond whatever limited 'healing' powers I have received might provide, as they only seem good for correcting things like poor eyesight and acne, or epidermal scarring and neurotoxin-based memory loss." Lex eyed him. "Yet you want me to let you catch me midair so you can swoop me off to wherever while I can't do a thing to stop you?" Lex said. "Thank you, no."

Clark blinked. He hadn't even thought of that. Huh. ...Actually, that _would_ be a really good way to--

"Have you even checked to see whether or not you can still fly in this state?" Lex asked.

\--maybe not.

"You are still horribly easy to read," Lex informed him.

"Sorry," said Clark.

They sat there awhile longer, looking up at the stars.

"So, no villainy tonight?" Clark said.

Lex slowly turned his head to Clark. He gave him a long stare.

"Do you really want me to?"

Clark thought about the idea of a superpowered Lex Luthor running around causing problems.

Clark winced.

"I was just asking," Clark mumbled.

Lex studied him for awhile.

"Might I propose another option, then?" Lex said.

"Sure." _Go for it, 'cause I'm all-out._

"Since villainy for the two of us is out" -- _well, duh_ thought Clark -- "and the other options are... unpalatable at present," Lex continued, "perhaps we should foil some crimes, instead."

_...Huh?_

_Wait, did he really just say 'we'? ...Is he actually serious?_

Clark turned to look at Lex, who was studying his fingernails, but otherwise looked...

_He's actually serious._

"Lex, you can't be a Hero!" Clark exclaimed, straightening.

There was a pause.

"Oh? Why not?"

Clark huffed out a breath in consternation. He crossed his arms. And then he made his point.

"Because Lois' head would explode."

...Lex seemed to be having as hard a time keeping a straight face as Clark was. Maybe a little harder.

Clark grinned as Lex turned away and lost his struggle not to laugh. Well, some things hadn't changed, at least -- Lex was just as fun to tease as ever. ...Even if it had been a little scary, getting past the _Well, **I** know perfectly well why I can't be a 'Hero', but let's see what you have to say about the matter, shall we?_ glare.

"Seriously, though," Clark started. "I can't."

"You--" Lex looked up at him again. " _You_ can't?" he asked in open surprise.

"Uh, did I not mention that part?" Clark said. "I'm kind of on League probation right now, since I'm only at half-strength. For something like the next week or so, at least." He grimaced. "If they catch me doing Hero work..." he trailed off, wincing. Because compared to what Lois would do to him, he'd _wish_ he was Oliver dealing with Chloe right now.

"So?"

Clark turned and gave him a _look_. "Bart can run rings around me, and no matter what you might think about me, I'm not _that_ sneaky. He'd catch up to me eventually." _Even if I was at full speed and not running around at only half-power._

"What does speed have to do with getting caught?" Lex asked, leaning back with a small smile. "Someone 'catching up' to you isn't the same thing as getting caught."

Clark frowned at him in confusion.

"You know, it'd be even worse for you if they found out what you were doing," Clark pointed out, because maybe Lex would get it better if he focused on what could go wrong for _him_ , personally. "Nobody in the League would believe that you were _only_ foiling crimes, and I won't be able to come up with a believable story about getting the rest of my powers back from you if you're running around _using_ them."

Lex tilted his head and gave Clark a penetrating look for awhile.

Clark sighed. "Not to mention that besides exploding Lois' head, you'd probably give Chloe a coronary." _And I know you don't want that._

"Hmm, that's true," Lex said after awhile, with an imperial look that said, _After all, if Chloe and Lois died, I wouldn't be able to torment them in their petty little lives, whenever they might manage to actually annoy me._

Yeah, Lex didn't like the idea of 'getting rid of' interesting people. ...He'd never get to see what they did next, or eventually understand them. Clark had kind of (finally) figured that one out after Winslow. --Not that Lex was anything like that lunatic, but the sentiment was close enough. It had just taken seeing a really extreme version of it before Clark had finally gotten a real handle on it: Winslow liked to play games with people like they were toys; Lex wanted to figure them out, like they were puzzles to be solved... and then maybe set aside and ignored.

Winslow, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy **breaking** _his_ 'playthings'...

Yeah, Clark definitely liked Lex better than Winslow. ...Not that that said much on its own, exactly.

"What makes you think that either of us would get caught?" Lex asked him.

"Uhhh, Bart and a handful of Kyrptonite?" Clark put out there.

"Clark," Lex repeated patiently, "'catching up' isn't the same thing as 'getting caught'." Lex shook his head when Clark still wasn't getting it. "Forget speed, and forget Kryptonite," Lex told him. " _Catching up to us_ isn't the problem. We all have to slow down sometime, and we both have jobs and people we need to interact with at normal speed. That's not a problem to avoid. All we **really** have to do is _not get caught_."

_Huh?_ thought Clark.

Lex smirked.

In retrospect, Clark should've known better than to tell Lex that he couldn't do something.

Apparently, that was about as fair game as somebody telling Lex that _Lex_ couldn't do something.

Oops.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> AN2: Why yes, I _do_ blame this on [iibnf's "iHero"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/289748). Just a bit. And the peoples who said they wanted to read more of this. :)


End file.
